I'd like to read this whole thread, but don't really have the time right now, so I'll just give my thoughts.
The atlas itself was never threatening to me, even in closed beta. However, that might just be because there were so many bad players in closed beta that I never saw a good atlas player.
Whenever the Stalker got into the game, I feared that far more than the Atlas because it always had a more threatening Damage output, and it seemed to live longer.
With Dire Wolf and King Crab in, They are incredibly more threatening on the Atlas. However, They are more fun to play with as well, because it's fun to poke them from the side and then hide when they are like "WHO HIT ME!?". And i usually rinse + repeat till they are dead, and they never get a shot off, or if they shoot at me, they usually juuuust barely miss as I go behind cover.
When I see an Atlas, I don't flatout ignore them, I worry about them the same way I worried about the pre-quirk Awesome. Chances are that if someone is using the Atlas, they are going to be good with it (not as much as the awesome though, but I blame that on it being a 100 tonner. so you'll see alot of people staring or LRMing with them.). Afterall, when I saw awesomes in my games, they surprisingly were some of the pilots that would do top damage, just because people would underestimate them that much.
As for each variant
Atlas D-DC - Has always caused me concern. Originally cause it was a painful mech to encounter, and ECM was OP like crazy. However, when I got around to piloting them, I generally just had LRMs + 1 ER PPC, AC20 + tag, because Most people at the time had long range weapons, and they would swarm around me (it was 8v8 btw), so anyone that would look at our group would get focused and killed rather fast. I never saw anyone, so I just used LRMs so I could deal some damage, and after a while i got into the habbit of running straight at the enemy team, not giving a crap about cover because of how slow i am, and most of hte fighting would be done before i got there to deal the final blows with my AC/20. So when i used the atlas, I had the most damage due to LRMs, and had quite a few kills due to having an ac/20 + ER PPC.
(tiny edit, figured I should mentioned I was almost always untouched for damage when I was at the end of my matches with the Atlas D-DC...... It's like having an 8 man premade in PUG queue whenever I used the Atlas D-DC)
Since 12v12 and nowadays, I laugh at any Atlas that LRM boats, and are usually the easiest mechs to kill. However, I still fear the Atlas D-DC, not because of the mech itself, but because of the swarming mentality that comes with ECM. Even if ECM is not super super useful, the focus fire effect that makes pugs come together is one thing I always fear.
Atlas S - Most combat focused version of the D-DC, I worry about this one the 2nd most because of the tremendous damage.
Boars head only makes me panic for a few seconds because I'm expecting a slow lumbering assault, and then he's running around as fast as some heavies. So I have to worry about the torso twist more than the others. Other than that pretty un-threatening, unless he's able to keep up with me and I'm trying to run away (but any mech can be scary at that point).
Atlas K - Not super threatening, but as threatening as anything else that has long range, when I'm using a mech that does not have enough range.... This is my favorite Atlas though, and It was fun seeing people waste their LRMs on me for the short time i did play it with the double AMS (cause at the time it didn't have anything else unique to it), and it actually caused the success for a few games I was in during a time when LRMs were incredibly popular.
Atlas RS - I've never been threatened by this thing. I've never seen a good pilot or build with one of these.
Atlas D - I almost never see this thing, never worried about it except for when it has an ac/20 when it's wrecking my allies.
Edited by Keeshu, 24 February 2015 - 10:39 AM.
7
Lordred, on 23 February 2015 - 06:37 PM, said:
can I haz my ATM's too?
